If at all possible, whenever I pick up my car from the shop I try to check the work done before I leave the parking lot. Pop the hood, look under the belly, run through the lights/radio/electricals, or whatever other work I've had them do. Too many shops or techs will half-ass it and call it done, otherwise.

Well, really, checking the work doesn't prevent them from half-assing it, but at least you can catch them at it without being stranded by the side of the road *as often*.

Yeah, it's been a few years now... But that did actually happen to me. I can no longer remember if the fellow whose truck I smashed was a major or a lt colonel... I know he had the oak leaves, but don't remember the color

Probably a major, though; I seem to recall thinking of it as hitting two majors in one day.

Anyhow.

To tell it again...

I'd had my new (to me) Explorer for about four weeks. I'd been asked to go pick up some materials at our headquarters and bring them back to where I worked.

The headquarters parking lot was shaped, hmm... let me see if this works:

Okay, so I had picked up the stuff and was exiting the parking lot. It was basically the afternoon and it was a beautiful day in October, just gorgeous. So I figured I'd roll down the windows and enjoy it. At that point, I'd never had all the windows down.

So I hooked out of the main parking area, and about where the big arrow is, I started rolling down all my windows. Probably going about 10-15mph, tops- it wasn't really well paved or anything.

And my left rear window made this hideous screeching sound. So I spin my head around to see what's going on (nothing; I later learned that this sound is caused by dust getting into the rubber seal). And then I look back to the front... and saw the nose of a white toyota tacoma (the one marked with the X), parked in one of the places in front of me, sticking out into my lane of travel.

And then alllll I saw was sky.

Because I hadn't had time to hit the brakes before I hit it, I plowed the tacoma sideways, until it got smashed up against the car next to it (marked with a Y). Then my explorer simply crawled up and over the Tacoma's left front wheel. I caved in its side panel, smashed the hood, and came out again through the grill. Loudest thing I'd ever heard not on the firing range

So I pulled over off the shoulder once I'd got past the parking spaces, to look at the damage and try not to have a heart attack.

I'd bent my bumper, and (because it curves around the nose) also dented my right front body panel.

The Tacoma was totaled. There probably wasn't anything forward of the doors that hadn't been smashed, and I'd done one better by bending it around the volkswagon it had been parked next to. A very familiar-looking volkswagon.

Fortunately, while I was standing around like an idiot trying to figure out what to do, a sergeant wandered by from one of the buildings. She went into the headquarters building to find the owners of the cars, and I called the MPs to report the accident.

The MPs did give me a ticket, and I don't fault them- even though the pickup had been parked sticking out into the lane of travel, it was totally avoidable; there was no oncoming traffic, so if I'd just been looking forward, I'd have been able to simply swerve sedately around the pickup's front end and carry on my merry way.

While that was going on, the sergeant came back with two folks. One was a master sergeant from my unit, who basically took over managing the whole thing so the sergeant who was helping me could go on her way, and one was (I'm pretty sure now) a major I'd never met before. Aaand the major was the owner of the pickup truck. Who had been scheduled to transfer to another base. The following day. Who was going to *drive* himself to said new assignment.

Under the circumstances, he was amazingly calm and polite, really. His first question was, "Do you have insurance?"I assured him that I did. He said, "Well, then that's better than the last person who hit it."

We exchanged insurance information, and he collected some of his stuff out of the truck, and went on his not-so-merry way. A wrecker came by, and they started the work of dragging the bent pickup out of the parking spot. And then I was able to ask the master sergeant, hey, did she know who the VW belonged to? She said, "Oh, yes, that's major ____'s car."

And that major, while not directly in my chain of command, *WAS* in my unit. We all excercised together, most mornings. Which was why his car looked so familiar- it was generally parked in one of the better spots near the PT field.

So that was how I managed to cream two majors' cars in one day. Though the VW really didn't look like it had suffered much more than paint damage. Tough buggers, VW's.

Anyhow, a couple weeks after that, my unit was asked if they had a spare soldier to send to a reserve unit in Kuwait that was complaining of being short staffed. I've never been able to prove the two events were related, but somehow it wouldn't really surprise me. I was deployed for six months, and allowed to come home again after a touch under eleven months

and that's the story, really. I've told it more than a few times, and this probably won't be the last time, either

Jenny decided to steal it for Milo, apparently. I didn't know about that until shortly before the strip went live- Jenny is a sneaky one, she is

well... the simple solution for a plastic bottle would be to cut it in half lengthwise along the original seam, write your notes, and then simply put the bottle back together again with heat. You could also use glue, but given that part of the deception involves drinking the contents of the bottle, I wouldn't want to drink *that*.

For a glass bottle, or just to say you did it without cutting the bottle, you could use a paintbrush with a bent end, I suppose...

Don't think of it as acid, think of it as an experience that helps you to recalibrate your pain threshold. Keep doing that sort of thing, and eventually such minor discomfort as severed limbs will be of no concern to you!

Or something.

PP: I hate taking the time to cook dinner for just myself. But if I don't eat, my body will eventually attempt to digest itself. Stupid metabolism.

Grab a clear soda bottle. Peel the label off; the back side of it is white. Write on the label. Put it back on the soda. During the exam, drink the soda, look through the bottle at the opposite side of the label. Voila!

Excellent. When do you think you'll have the books ready to send by? (I'm moving house pretty soon, so kind of need to know if I should update my post-to address.)

It'll be some months yet- we're still waiting on the last quote from the printers, and even once we have it, we'll still need to run a color test, do the proofing, and then wait for the print run to finish. Any delay at any of those steps adds a few weeks of turnaround, unfortunately. Still, the end is finally in sight!